Step by Step/Issue 39
This is Issue #39 of ''Step by Step''. This the third issue of Volume Seven. Lost The man climbing the stairs to the police station felt out of the place. There was a pain in between his lungs—a shard of glass. There was something gripping his heart—a hand smothering it with each breath. When he got closer to the metal door, ajar as he had left it, a new heartbeat pulsed in his head. The feeling of something new, something better. What's his name—is he a local or a stranger? The man has only been in this town for a day. Which town? Red Smith told him exactly what he needed to do—he is in Red Smith's town. He grabbed hold of the door, seeking balance. It was a cold and bare sensation to the hotness of his hand. His fingers. Around the wine glass, sipping it, wanting to kiss it. Anything to calm the pain, the hotness somewhere in his chest. He took his chest, massaging the skin above his left breast. Where did this pain come from? He only remembers teeth. Yellow teeth. Ones that bit his wrist, bit his soul. Then he heard voices. It was Wayne. Wayne talking to a boy. The boy Eugene, ugly and young, brazen and brash. Claudette? A French lady's name? A wife, Wayne's. A second of awareness; a new thought broke into his head, breathing. Marvin Chevrolet, who had been eaten. What ate him, that was the question. That woman, infected and diseased. A diseased woman had bitten him. It made sense. The man took his bad arm, ungloved. The blood looks like chickenpox, like freckles. Freckles? He touched his face. It burned to the touch. What was his problem? Did that cop make fun of my face? Too many faces looking at him. But he had his own face. He suddenly knew who he was. The Police Officer of the Month—the hero who made slain the Trouble Quartet. The one who was almost beheaded by Lyle Jackson. Jackson. He does recognize that name. "I just talked to him," the man tells himself. To who? "Jameson, Corporal Jameson!" The man without a face closed the door behind him. The keys dangled at his side. "Hello—" The word hung in the air for a second. "—Wayne?" "One of the officers gave us this job to do," Wayne said, heaving out his chest with a breath of air. "Wipe these floors and we get to sleep into some motel rooms that they gave us." "What time is it?" "A little past midnight." "What do you want, Wayne?" Wayne still has that beard. Eugene still has that look of anger, yet now it is on fire. Both have broomsticks in their hands. They've been wiping the floor. Dirty laundry. That struck another cord. "I needed to tell you something." "What?" "Me and Eugene wanted to thank you." "I didn't," Eugene said. "I thanked those two at the hospital. Joseph and Private Black. And one of those police officers." "Not Hector?" Carter said, and saying that name struck another memory. "He's a murderer." "Malcolm?" "He beat me across the face with his gun." "Right," Wayne said. "Me? What about me? "You?" Eugene said it, as if he was joking. "This town's very safe," said Wayne. He was coming off as a distraction to Carter. A great distraction to what Carter was seeking. The meat, fresh meat. "I'm suprised how bad this disaster has gotten." "Disaster," said Carter. "What disaster?" Wayne didn't respond, and he saw in the light the sweat maddeningly breeding on Carter's forehead. "It was time. About time," said Carter. He looked at Wayne. The two were at least a dozen or so feet away. He was at the head of the stairs, gently walking into the lobby. Carter felt better. "Who am I, man?" "Carter Jameson, right?" "I don't know. You tell me, Wayne." With that, he ripped past the two and went for the exit. He hauled himself the last couple steps, grabbing his chest again, and slammed through the doors. Outside, he put the standard-issue handgun into the new holster that Red gave him. The fresh Indianian air hit him. A better Carter. He's the better Carter. "Joe." A distance. ---- Private Joseph laid on something. He was laying on something soft. He had come to when he heard a voice he recognized calling him. Lost, he thought, I felt lost. He opened his eyes. The first thing he saw was the clock on the wall—it's twelve midnight. The first thing he felt was a numbness in his upper chest. A growing numbness, also. He tried to move. Couldn't. Tried to breath in. Stung a bit. Where was he? "Yo, Joe." Joseph turned his head to the right. "Gordon? Is that Gordon?" "The one and only." "How am I? How did the doctor find me?" "He hasn't. But it's not that bad. You're alive and full of painkillers. He checked me out first. Gave me two aspirins and told me not to walk." "You're here." "I insisted." Both laughed. "They got us here and the others in a junk motel on the other side of town." "Were they fed? Or what?" "No idea. But I was watching television with the others in the lobby." "And?" "We were watching the news. They're talking about some Trouble Quartet—Jackson and Nolan. Those two that were with us. And their friends, Dennis and Derek Woods." "On the news?" "The Trouble Quartet. It's a group of four killers and thieves." "That's insane." "No shit. But it's true. And now they're being held at the Police Station." "Are you sure it's them?" "It can only be them." It was twelve-o-five and Carter was hunting. ---- Red Smith has been pacing back in forth in his office for fifteen minutes. There are a couple questions running through his head. "Is this the right thing?" "Morally, hell no." Donovan Smith tells him. "Is Carter trustworthy? Can I trust a man like him?" "You said it yourself. The man is totally insane. I saw him when he left this room." And then with slight disgust, Donovan added, "His face is bloody." "He's a very bad, bad boy. I know. I think he killed some people." The sun rises every day for the farm, the bee flies from flower to flower, and the sunset gives way to the night. But Red Smith doesn't care about Carter Jameson's wrongdoings. A man's worth is a man's worth, and loyalty is most important. A old car can be old as long as it gets you to a destination, as would a new car. "What were you two talking about?" "I gave him this cigar and he sat down," Red Smith said, pulling the fine cigar from his breastpocket again. "Then I asked him about Summercreek High. He told me what happened there. How he and that sergeant, the one that Lyle supposedly killed, were investigating him. Arrested him for stealing food. And how did they know?" "We can blackmail them, then," he said. "How did they find out?" "Wayne, that biker who came in just today, told him!" Red Smith let out a roar of laughter and stuck the cigar in his mouth. "You shouldn't do this, brother." "Why not?" "That man, that Carter Jameson is sick," Donovan quipped. "In the jail with them is where he belongs; let them cannabalize each other." "Sick in the brain is what he is," Red Smith said, going around his desk and sitting down. "Look at all this," he said, emphasizing the amount of notes he had scribbled down about the tragedy at Summercreek High School. "So much? How?" "It's like he was a kid looking for his Tattle-tale award." There's at least ten pages about the massacre at Summercreek. All written until the last line. "Hector Pacino? Shot a teacher named Blake when they were in the school's cafeteria. Apparently, according to Carter, and he's a damn good speaker, he wasn't charged. He was kept isolated for a whole long week in some room. See, in a state prison, he would've spent a week snacking on hamburgers and fries and watching some fine television—" and with a shit-eating grin—"I commend that Malcolm." "He's a soldier. Just like the rest." "They all are," Red said, frowning slightly. "Like Patrick Hughes, the last of his kind." "You know what we have to do, right?" "I know, Don. We got them separated. First I want the quartet to go. Then we be worried about the rest. For example, I'm planning for Amanda Olson, Officer Olson to come here for a talk," he said. "Then she'll disappear." "Disappear?" Donovan said with slight hesitation, uneased at hurting a woman. Donovan does not say that Red Smith ''should ''allow for her a chance to join the cause, for he knows the consqeuences of acting as powerful as he. The executions conducted, by the Band, until now, for the cause, had proven that nobody was to cross the bringer of dawn, he who sat with the cigar, Red Smith. "The cause must grow," Donovan said with a false expression of glee, "with new additions." "I agree, brother Donovan," replied Red Smith. His face was full of calm, cheeks fat and his eyes were brutally alive. People fear what grows them, Red thought as much. People yelped and leapt during times of revolution, screaming for the leaders to be hung up high. Red Smith knew this well. "Want a smoke of it?" he asks his brother, knowing full well that Donovan doesn't care for the cigar. This was a time of covert revolution and, to Donovan Smith, empty of time for ill-spent pleasure. "I don't care for Cuban cigars." Red Smith smiled. "We are solitary soldiers, brother," he said, hoping to remember this moment. Hoping that the revolution would go smoothly. Hoping that all his enemies would perish within the week's end. Hoping that, by the week's end, the town of Smith's Ferry would become separate, pure and innocent, illegal from the country. Hoped for the new "To the solitary soldier, when his ass is tired, when his lungs were apent, when his hands are bleeding that Communist red shade, a good smoke or two is his greatest of companions." "I have the biker and that one boy mopping floors." "Keeping them busy?" "No. Buying time. Less witnesses, too. They'll leave, shut the station," Donovan said, aware of his prior betrayal to the cause by secondguessing his brother. He thought better now, for his own good, to agree with Red. "Then Carter Jameson can walk in with the keys. He has the keys, right?" "Of course." "Where is he now?" "I don't know." "For Christ's sake, Red!" "I told him to go to the motel. Told him to take a rest, Don. I gave him wine!" "Don't worry. This sounds like a delicate situation, very sensitive. We have to be careful." Before leaving, Donovan asked Red if he still had the rebellion flag. Red said of course and Donovan told him that Halloween was two months ago. Outside, now, Donovan Smith was walking through the streets. There was a light wind. He buttoned his vest, tucked the green shirt he had beneath it into his pants, and continued down the street. He saw a quiet residential zone from a distance. After five minutes of walking down this street, which he knows by heart and soul, he sees someone in the distance. It looks like some man. There's a cloud of white around him. "Hey," he said, crossing the street over to the man. "Hello there," Hector Pacino responded. He has a box of Marlboro cigarettes in his hands—the ones that belong to Lyle Jackson. He also has Derek's lucky revolver at his hip. Thank God, the mayor's brother can't see it. "How long have you been here?" "I think two hours." "Have you seen a man with blonde hair? Carter Jameson?" "Should I have?" Donovan Smith chuckled and his white teeth popped out. "A Carter Jameson? Haven't for a while now." "Are you Hector, Hector Pacino?" "Officer Pacino." "You're in for a world of hurt, friend." Donovan walked past the smoking man to continue searching. He didn't feel lost here. This was his home—he was looking for a pest in his backyard. ---- =Issues= Category:Step by Step Category:Category:Step by Step Issues Category:Issues